- "If my competitor were drowning, I'd stick a hose
in his mouth and turn on the water."
-
- --Ray Kroc
-
- ".a funny, jowly, canny, barbarous guy who lives
in a multimillion-dollar condo on Park Avenue in Manhattan and conveys
himself about the planet in a corporate jet and a private yacht. At sixty-seven,
he is unrepentant in the face of criticism. He describes himself as a "tough
man in a tough business".."The animal-rights people," he
once said, "want to impose a vegetarian's society on the U.S. Most
vegetarians I know are neurotic.""
-
- --Jeff Tietz's description of meat processing magnate,
Joseph Luter III (from his Rolling Stone article, "Boss Hog")
-
- Despite the obvious signs that our nation is declining
rapidly and despite the increasing global animosity against us for our
greed, excesses, hypocrisy, and belligerence, we US Americans are defiantly
"staying the course". Neither harsh reality nor the ire of the
world community has shaken our foundations. Mouthing hollow platitudes
about freedom and liberty while supporting a war machine perpetrating genocide
in Iraq, we mindlessly buttress a socioeconomic system some of history's
most notable fascists would envy.
-
- While many of us mollify ourselves with the belief that
the malevolence of the Bush administration is merely an anomaly in American
government, the reality is that the current administration has simply become
emboldened enough to dispose of the false mask of benevolence worn tightly
by its predecessors.
-
- Let's face it. We are obsessed with American Capitalism,
a system so rotten that it actually encourages, enables, legalizes, and
richly rewards pathological degrees of narcissism, greed, competitiveness,
and ruthlessness. While millions suffer and die because of us, we cocoon
ourselves in impenetrable bubbles of denial and continue feeding our pathetic
addictions to fast food, gas guzzling automobiles, American Idol, military
domination, video games, the NFL, "righteous" Christianity, and
the acquisition of material possessions. Yet we actually expect human beings
who are not mentally incapacitated to believe that theUnited States is
a beacon of hope for humanity on a noble quest to spread "freedom
and democracy"?
-
- How could one maintain a straight face while asserting
that a Constitutional Republic (alleged to be premised on Enlightened principles)
could co-exist with such a deeply depraved socioeconomic system?
-
- We're talking about the system that made the "successes"
of men like Ray Kroc and Joseph Luter III possible. Those eager to assuage
their guilt or avoid the mental exercise of critical thinking can simply
embrace the inane mythology that those who rise to the top of the economic
hierarchy in the United States are harmlessly enjoying the fruits of their
labor they so richly deserve. Yet for truth seekers, this conclusion reeks
with a stench that rivals the pungent stink of Boss
Hog's factory farms.
-
- Since the meat industrial complex represents such a rich
example of the abject inhumanity of American Capitalism, corporations like
Smithfield Foods and McDonald's were so instrumental in the growth of this
complex, and men like Kroc and Luter profited so handsomely from such a
massive entity's existence, let's scrutinize the devastation this abominable
entity is wreaking upon our fur, feather and scale-bearing cousins, the
Earth, and humanity.
-
- According to muck-raking journalist Eric Schlosser, US
Americans spent over $110 billion on fast food in the year 2000, more than
they did on higher education. Aside from being a tragic indicator of our
grossly misplaced priorities, this shocking statistic is an indictment
of McDonald's and its ilk. Ubiquity, affordability, convenience, laboratory-developed
great taste, and a capacity to manipulate public opinion that puts Bernays
to shame enable fast food giants to spread like noxious weeds, annihilating
hapless "mom and pop" competitors like so much "collateral
damage" in a US imperialistic invasion.
-
- And what red-blooded American would leave the drive-thru
without a Big Mac, chicken nuggets, sausage biscuit, bacon burger, fish
sandwich, or some other delightful victual containing meat?
-
- To keep up with the sky-rocketing demand for meat caused
by the mass-production and mass consumption of fast food, men like Luter
jumped to the fore to pioneer factory farming and "vertical integration"
of the industry.
-
- Thanks to corporate behemoths, livestock producing family
farms are all but extinct. In the United States, 54%
of cattle are raised by 5% of the nation's farms and corporate entities
produce a staggering 98% of our poultry.
-
- While many pets in our country receive better care than
billions of deeply impoverished humans in developing countries, we consume
the flesh, fat, and muscle of sentient beings merely to satiate our carnivorous
desires. Compounding this barbarism is the fact that this behavior enriches
those who condemn millions of pigs, cattle, fish, and chickens to abbreviated
and miserable existences.
-
- Consider what our fellow living beings endure that we
might indulge ourselves with burgers, filets, chops and such:
-
- "Unfortunately,
this trend of mass production has resulted in incredible pain and suffering
for the animals. Animals today raised on factory farms have had their genes
manipulated and pumped full of antibiotics, hormones and other chemicals
to encourage high productivity. In the food industry, animals are not considered
animals at all; they are food producing machines. They are confined to
small cages with metal bars, ammonia-filled air and artificial lighting
or no lighting at all. They are subjected to horrible mutilations: beak
searing, tail docking, ear cutting and castration. Even the most minimum
humane standards proposed are thwarted by the powerful food conglomerates."
-
- The
9 billion chickens raised each year for their
meat are packed into horribly over-crowded, filthy and under-ventilated
sheds. Pharmaceuticals
and genetic manipulation accelerate their body growth to the extent that
their internal organs often fail or they become severely crippled. Denied
their natural inclinations to roost, nest, and bathe in the sun, their
wretched lives end with a slash of their throats by a mechanical razor.
-
- 85 million
cattle die each year to put beef on our tables.
Four corporate conglomerates account for 80% of this massive slaughter.
Ravaged by diseases and metabolic disorders caused by unnatural diets,
over-crowding, and cocktails of growth-enhancing hormones and antibiotics,
cattle fare little better than their feathered counter-parts.
-
- Branding, castration, waddling, and dehorning are often performed without anesthesia. In spite of the Humane
Slaughter Act, many cattle are improperly stunned before their throats
are slit to bleed them in preparation for the final mutilation of their
remains.
-
- "Pigs
have the cognitive ability to be quite sophisticated. Even more so than
dogs and certainly [more so than] three-year-olds,"
says Dr. Donald Broom, Cambridge University professor and former scientific
advisor to the Council of Europe." Yet each year in the United States
we torture and kill 100 million of them. Factory "farmers" keep
sows confined in tiny spaces and in perpetual states of impregnation for
several years until they are eventually slaughtered. Hogs are "fortunate"
in that their sentence to a life of profound misery is a "mere"
six months before they "nobly sacrifice themselves" to provide
us with ham, sausage, and bacon. As with cattle, pigs are subjected to
multiple mutilations without pain-killers, including tail and tooth removal.
Cursed by their own intellect, the porcine "farm" experience
is perhaps the cruelest. Packing them into claustrophobic enclosures causes
them serious mental distress, often leading to cannibalism, self-mutilation,
and repetitive, compulsive behaviors.
-
- Commercial
fishing has decimated fish populations to the
extent that nearly 30% of the seafood we consume now needs to be raised
on aquafarms. Aside from driving some varieties of fish to near extinction,
commercial fishing techniques cause the deaths of over 100,000 marine mammals
each year. Fish raised on aquafarms face many of the same horrors as their
terrestrial cousins. Over-crowding, disease, and injury kill approximately
40% of farm-raised fish before they reach market. Aquafarming also has
disastrous environmental consequences resulting from the release of "tons of fish feces, antibiotic-laden
fish feed, and diseased fish carcasses."
-
- What does our overwhelming support for this systematic
torment and massacre of millions of our fellow creatures say about our
society? Patrice Greanville, board member of Animal
People Magazine, editor and publisher of Cyrano's
Journal Online, and renowned Leftist radical, put it like this:
-
- "This
moral blindness is inexcusable for those who rightly see themselves
as the moral vanguard of humanity. For the bottom line is that speciesism-a
surreptitious form of human fascism applied to animals and nature in general-is
by far the oldest and most pervasive form of brutal tyrannization encountered
in the sorry annals of human history. I don't use the word "fascism"
as hyperbole in this context or for dramatic effect. I wish it were hyperbole.
But the fact is that fascism is noted for its unilateral proclamations
of superiority by a certain race or breed, endowing said race with the
"right" to dominate, exploit, and annihilate at will any group
deemed "inferior." If that pretty much doesn't describe eloquently
our despicable behavior toward non-human animals, I don't know what does."
-
- Speciesism is yet another ugly manifestation of the hubristic
narcissism that has infected our collective psyche here in the United States.
While tormenting and butchering "lesser beings" simply to please
our palates is reprehensible behavior, there is a less obvious but equally
sinister component to the meat industrial complex. Let's explore it, shall
we?
-
- Consuming meat is a luxury that comes with an extremely
high human cost. While dated, agricultural economist Rene Dumont's observation
rings even more true in 2007 than when he made it in 1974:
-
- "The
overconsumption of meat by the rich means hunger for the poor. This
wasteful agriculture must be changed - by the suppression of feedlots where
beef are fattened on grains, and even a massive reduction of beef cattle."
-
- Dr.
Aaron Altshul, author of Proteins: Their Chemistry
and Politics, concluded that the foods cultivated to sustain a vegetarian
diet provide enough calories per acre to support twenty times more people
than the meat produced by raising livestock. Altshul further observed that
the Earth could support up to 20 billion people if available agricultural
land was devoted to cultivating vegetarian sustenance.
-
- So while we savor our succulent T-bones, relish our tender
pork loin, and feast upon our marinated chicken breasts, over 35,000 of
our fellow human beings starve to death EACH DAY. 30,000 of them are CHILDREN
UNDER THE AGE OF FIVE.
-
- Consider these disturbing facts (most of which can be
found here):
-
- --80% of starving children live in countries where there
is actually a grain surplus, but farmers use the grain to feed livestock
in order to sell meat to wealthier nations
-
- --Due to its profitability, cattle ranching is rapidly
replacing the cultivation of essential crops in Central and South America
(where millions of people are malnourished or starving). Deforestation
to create cattle pasture is also occurring at an alarming rate.
-
- --Over 70% of the grain that we grow goes to feed livestock.
Of the calories animals derive from this grain, only a small percentage
yields meat for human consumption.
-
- --In a world in which potable water is becoming increasingly
scarce, the United States devotes 50% of its supply to livestock production.
-
- --Raising crops to feed humans requires far less land
than producing meat. Today there is 2/3 of an acre of arable land per person
on the Earth. Within 40 years that figure is expected to drop to 1/3 of
an acre.
-
- --Typically, 60 gallons of water will yield one pound
of wheat. It
takes about 2500 gallons to produce a pound of beef. While water is
a fairly renewable resource, the meat industrial complex does its best
(or more appropriately, worst) to ensure that such renewal is seriously
compromised. The
EPA has determined that livestock waste, 1.4 billion tons of which
were released into our water supply in 1996, is the principal
water pollutant in the United States.
-
- --"Vegfam, a British non-profit organization also
claims that 10 acres can support 60 people when growing soybeans, 24 when
growing wheat, 10 when growing corn, 2 when raising cattle. Also, PETA
claims, "because of deforestation for cattle land, each vegetarian
saves 1 acre of rainforest a year.""
-
- Pork chops, fried chicken, bacon, and KC strip steaks
are delectable in a way that defies description. Yet like so many of the
tantalizing offerings dangled before us by our corporate masters, they
are contributing to the demise of the human race, our animal brethren,
and the Earth itself.
-
- The system we have been conditioned to accept, support,
and adore is unsustainable, vile, exploitative, and, frankly, murderous.
American Capitalism is little more than an "evolved" form of
feudalism in which corporations have replaced lords and the working class
has been condemned to economic serfdom. The concomitant symptoms of this
global malignancy, including runaway industrialization, imperial conquest,
technological advances sans ethical considerations, environmental destruction,
fascism, racism, speciesism, neoliberalism, and rampant consumerism, are
straining the Earth and its inhabitants beyond reasonable limits.
-
- Don Robertson, the American Philosopher, has concluded that "we
are all moral barbarians today."
-
- If we wish to evolve into more civilized human beings
and perpetuate life on Earth, we need to put some serious effort into embodying
Robertson's moral imperative:
-
- "The moral imperative of life is to live a life
that detracts not at all from the lives available to those who will follow
us into this world."
-
- While not easy, shunning the egregiously deleterious
meat industrial complex is a simple first step. (To learn more, go to http://www.goveg.com/)
-
- Disclosure Statement: The author of this essay converted
to vegetarianism two months ago. As a result, he has experienced spiritual,
physical, and mental invigoration. He highly recommends it.
-
-
- Jason Miller is a wage slave of the American Empire who
has freed himself intellectually and spiritually. He writes prolifically,
his essays been widely published, he is an associate editor for Cyrano's
Journal Online, and he volunteers at homeless shelters. He welcomes
constructive correspondence at willpowerful@hotmail.com or via his blog,
Thomas Paine's Corner, at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/
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